Mary Sisson's Blog, page 115

Aigh!

Ugh, I'm on chapter 27, and the large-print edition of Trust is over the page-count limit at CreateSpace! Damn it! I didn't think this would be a problem because the regular edition of Trust is shorter than the regular edition of Trang, but I used a different font for Trust and that must have made a difference. Should have checked before I started laying it out, no?

Hm...the question is, how to get more text on a page without impairing readability. I'm already a little small on the spacing between lines, so I think I'll squeeze the margins a tad.

I just wish I hadn't wasted all that toner printing each chapter out! Ah, c'est la vie, this round of production has been going so smoothly, it's about time a wrench was thrown into the works....

Who's driving the bus?

One belief I keep hearing from newer writers is that they don't have to bother with all the "technical" stuff (like proofreading or formatting or grammar or actually having a plot) because they hope that the reader will be "swept away" by their marvelous story.

Let's put aside the fact that I think that's much more likely to happen if you have the "technical" stuff down. I actually have an issue with the "swept away" imagery itself.

I mean, of course I've been swept up in a story--I got a lot of exercise when I read the His Dark Materials series because I kept missing my bus stops. (Like, seriously, every day--it got really annoying.)

But when people talk about being "swept away" in real life, it's usually when they're talking about some horrible mistake that they made. People who get "swept away" a lot tend have multiple divorces, children who won't talk to them, criminal records, and no money.

In other words, I feel like saying, "I want the reader to get swept away" is somewhat akin to saying, "I want to take advantage of the reader" or "I want the reader to make a really bad choice by reading my book." It suggests to me that you aren't actually interested in pleasing the reader in any kind of meaningful way. You're being a little sleazy.

I'd rather go with the imagery of taking the reader someplace...on your bus. You are the bus driver, and you want to take the reader on a wonderful tour, where they'll see all kinds of marvelous things and love it and recommend you to their friends and take all the other bus tours you have on offer.

(Yes, I ride the bus a lot. You can read on the bus; if you read while you drive everybody gets all upset.)

Now, in order for your passengers to relax and enjoy the trip, they need to believe that their bus driver can drive a bus.

I cannot express how important this is. This is Step #1, without which no other steps can follow. No one is going to relax and enjoy the ride when they are doubting the bus driver's ability to, you know, drive.

I've ridden a few buses where the drivers were having fairly spectacular mental breakdowns. I responded one of two ways.

Way #1: White knuckle it through the ride, and then call the bus company and report the driver. The reader equivalent is me death-marching my way through The Fountainhead and then telling everyone what an awful, awful book it is.

Way #2: Get off the bus as soon as I can and take one with a different driver. This is probably what most readers do--they bail. Fast. You know the saying, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression"? That's very true with books because when people hit something that makes them question the ability of the writer, they just stop reading. You never get any sort of second chance. It's all over.

Obviously, I try not to have mistakes in my work. I also try not to have things that look like mistakes. I try to avoid the appearance of error, as well as actual error.

It's especially tricky for me because in the Trang series, there are characters who do not know or use proper English grammar, and all the aliens' speech is run through these translation devices that hatchet up everything. So I have to make very sure that people realize that I am doing this on purpose--I'm not doing it because I'm ignorant or because I can't write well. I'm doing it because it serves the story. I can drive a bus.

If you must go with the "swept away" concept, please bear in mind that successful seducers are very detail oriented. They put a ton of effort into the trappings of romance, hoping to distract you from the lack of any actual love. Indeed, 90% of the time it works because the seducee thinks, Gee, if they're doing this much work, they must really care! (No, they don't--at least not about you.) Successful seducers aren't sloppy and they don't leave things to chance--getting someone to the point of being "swept away" takes a lot of planning.

Ownership

Right now, there's a fairly amusing thing going on at Passive Voice: This agent posted a (dumb) critique of this post, and then claimed, "No, it wasn't a critique of that post! It was some other Harlequin author writing on some other self-publishing blog!" and then took down the post, and then took down another post because people were leaving criticism there, etc.

Forget Bad Agent Sydney. This is the guy you want to hire.

Aside from the general hilarity (he says you can make a living writing for Harlequin! That's news to Harlequin!) the post demonstrates Mayer's point that there's this mentality in traditional publishing that writers don't create content, agents/publishers/bookstores do.

But there's a twist: According to this guy, the publisher is responsible for a writer's successes. The writer alone is responsible for their failures. (The business model itself of course has nothing to do with how much money an author makes. Just put that thought out of your silly little head.)

Here it is:

When an author is not making money, it is NOT always the fault of the publisher. Maybe their writing has gone flat. Maybe they aren’t promoting enough. Maybe it is simply a matter of bad timing for when the book comes out. The point is, be careful blaming others for your lack of success in the business.

I for one am a firm believer in Harlequin. The editors work AMAZINGLY hard with the authors out there dedicated to their craft. The promotion departments do an amazing amount of work to get those books out to their readers. I would also add that all of the editors work amazingly well with me personally when I want to negotiate contracts. They are in it for the long haul with their writers and they don’t want to lose a great thing when they see it.

Interesting, no? If your writing "goes flat" (whatever that means), the editor had nothing to do with it. If your writing doesn't go flat, it's because the editor worked "AMAZINGLY hard." The promotion departments are also "amazing," but of course if the promotions don't come off it's because the writer isn't promoting enough.

And if the book fails because of "bad timing," which the writer has absolutely no control over and is completely the responsibility of the publisher? Hey, clearly also not the fault of the publisher. The publisher is "in it for the long haul" and "don't want to lose a great thing." They don't screw up, ever. If your book fails because of bad timing, it must be your fault somehow--you're cursed or something.

I understand the impulse to take ownership of a writer's successful work. I went to college with Joel Derfner, who wrote the excellent Swish. We've reconnected via Facebook, and a few months ago he was working on an essay that was giving him a hard time, so he asked for feedback. Being a former editor, I sharped my trusty axe (oh, who are we kidding? I sharpen it every night before I take it to bed with me; I call it Vera) and took a few whacks at it.

He published a really marvelous essay, and I was so proud--of myself.

And then I got a grip. I mean, he'd written several drafts well before I got to it, and it's not like the draft I saw sucked or anything. It's also not like I would have ever, in a million years, written that essay--it's Joel's life experience, and more important, Joel's talent that takes that experience and converts it so delightfully into written words.

Fine-tuning is important. Fine-tuning helps. I am all in favor of fine-tuning.

But fine-tuning is also roughly a gazillion times easier than creating something good from scratch.

As John F. Kennedy once said, "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." In the course of my career, I've had editor after editor take credit for "teaching" me how to write--of course the worse the editor, the more likely it was that those words came out of their mouth. Don't believe it when other people lay claim to your talent--if they were so damned talented, they'd be writing themselves.

Progress report

I  laid out 15 of Trust's 28 chapters today--whoo! Yes, sticking everything into templates first is a big time saver....

A damning defense of agents

You  know what's always interesting? To read someone defend behavior you think is largely indefensible. Sometimes you come out of it with a fresh understanding of why a decent person would act that way.

Other times you don't.

PV linked to Dean Wesley Smith's post on that letter by the Association of Large Publishers' and Chain Bookstores'--oops! I mean Authors'--Representatives.

And someone critical of Smith's attitude responded, "Since when was an agent a trade union official?"

WOW. Wow wow wow wow wow.

Let's break that down, because that's a very insightful way to look at agents.

Say you were in a trade union. When would you go to a trade union official?

1. When you're not getting paid.

2. When your work conditions are not acceptable for some other reason.

3. When the company you're working for is not living up to the terms of its contract.

Now, for most people, that's more or less what they want their agent to do. Not getting paid? Onerous work conditions? Publisher not honoring your contract? The thought is, you go to your agent.

The thought is, the agent is in your corner.

NOT TRUE. Someone who is defending agents thinks it's totally stupid to think that's true. Someone who is defending agents thinks that is a silly and pathetic expectation.

Why go to an agent? The person continues, "one reason only – because it was the best way to get the attention of a senior editor at a publishing house and get our work seriously considered."

This person is completely in agreement with Smith, whether they like it or not. Both think agents do not--even remotely--represent authors in any kind of meaningful way.

It's just that Smith thinks they ought to. Stupid, stupid Smith.

And stupid, stupid you if you have the same expectation.

Remember, just because you pay them doesn't mean they work for you.

When traditional publishers act like self-publishers, guess who gets the shaft?

The New York Times has a story about how traditional publishers now want their authors to crank out a ton of titles, title after title, including short fiction and novellas that the traditional publisher can sell as 99-cent e-books.

Isn't that swell? That's exactly the business strategy many self-published writers use, and it works great! Once again, it turns out that all the Very Special Services a large publisher provides don't work nearly as well as offering a lot of titles at a low price!

Fantastic! Traditional publishers are saved!!!

There's just one problem: How much are the writers making in this scenario? You know, those writers who are now being forced to crank out title after title, regardless of whether or not this is something that helps the quality of their output?

Oh, yes--almost nothing!

Let me quote me again, because I can never get enough of that:

OK, so on a 99-cent book, [traditionally-published author George Pelecanos is] making 17 cents--which is half of what he'd make putting that sucker onto Amazon himself at that price, but that's not the scary bit.

The scary bit is that he gets $2.27 on a $13 e-book! !! !!!! !!!!! He could get that kind of money for a book he self-published on Amazon and priced at...wait for it...$3.25.

That's almost a TEN DOLLAR DIFFERENCE to the buyer! And a ZERO DOLLAR DIFFERENCE in profits to the author!

This is why you read all this hand-wringing about how low book prices are going to bankrupt authors. They certainly will--if authors stay with their publishers. As traditional publishers act more and more like self-publishers, authors will in all likelihood get less and less money.

But the problem there is not the cheap books. The problem is the fact that you're working for someone who wants you to produce more and more product while paying you less and less for it.

I mean, I guess you can become the literary equivalent of a sweatshop worker if you want, but I personally object to that sort of thing and don't see the point of doing it unless the alternative is subsistence farming. Which it isn't. The alternative is keeping 35% to 70% of the revenues generated by your titles, and deciding yourself when you want to produce them.

Or, as Passive Guy put it, "Just wait until authors under contract learn indie authors are making serious money from $0.99 or $1.99 short fiction. That only works if you don’t give the publisher 75% of net revenues* from ebooks."

 

*An accounting aside: What is meant by "net revenues"? Well, the problem is that typically this term isn't very well-defined in contracts, which is bad, because "net revenues" can be whatever your publisher says it is.

If we took a common-sense approach, "net revenues" for an e-book would mean "revenues after the retailer has taken their cut." It's something to look out for, because sometimes publishers say things like, "You get to keep 50% of net revenues" and it sounds really good, because if you self-publish you're keeping 70% of total revenues, and isn't it worth a small discount to have the publisher take care of everything for you?

Buuut...the best-case scenario is that they mean 50% after Amazon has taken its 30%. So it's really 35% of total revenues, which is a much more significant chop to your income.

Progress report

I'm taking the regular layout and turning into a large-print layout--this is very different from the way I did things last time, which was basically to take the text, format e-books, and then start laying stuff out. The problem with doing things that way is that you catch a lot of mistakes when you're making layouts--reading something printed out in a completely different font seems to refresh the eye--so I had to revise the e-books over and over and over again. (Indeed, I caught a couple of minor things today.)

APH-style large-print layouts aren't justified--you use a ragged right, so you don't break words at the end of the line. You also don't indent paragraphs, instead using two lines of white space. That means that a lot of the hyphens come out, as does all of the kerning and all of the tab characters, which is also what you want if you're going to format something into an e-book.

You do, however, have to throw in extra line spaces between paragraphs and to get those bottom lines to even up. So what I did was I stripped down the text and saved that. If I don't find mistakes in the printout, I'll just use that clean text--if I do, I'll have to clean it again, but it should be less complex.

I stripped out the entire book, and I threw it all into templates. Only one chapter is truly and properly laid out, with everything lined up the way it should be, but they're all in the rough-and-ready stage--correct font, correct paragraph style, correct headers and chapter numbers, etc.

I'm not going to have a hell of a lot of time to work this weekend, but hopefully this won't take too long and I can get it done and off to CreateSpace before I leave town.

Thinky thoughts on marketing

Remember how I was going to do a giveaway on Goodreads, but then I saw that the book had to come out within the past six months, so I didn't? Well, Lindsay Buroker did a post on Goodreads giveaways, and it turns out that they don't actually care about that. Definitely go read through the comments on Buroker's post--a lot of good advice for maximizing those giveaways.

It's a little annoying (sometimes I'm overly fond of rules), but I guess it's good that I could coordinate a Trang giveaway with the release of Trust. (And hey! I already have the books!) The only problem for me is that I'm going to be out of town for a week in May (yeah, right in the middle of my big push to get Trust out, life is very convenient sometimes), so I'll have to schedule around that.

The other thing that I'm thinking hard about is advertising. You have to be really thoughtful with it, in my opinion. The people I reach on Twitter and with this blog (and I do reach more now, the ho'ing has paid off) are other writers. Which is great, and definitely something I want to do, but of course I don't expect them to be big fans of my kind of book (that would be incredibly hypocritical of me).

But when it comes to advertising, I want to reach readers, not writers (and science-fiction readers, who are rare birds indeed). That's part of the thinking with marketing at sci-fi cons, and I need to do something similar with on-line advertising. It's about finding the audience: Lawrence Block mentioned a self-published book that sold well at feed stores, and there's a guy who did very well marketing his self-published book on gun forums--in both cases these were books that came out before self-publishing really took off, which gives you an idea of how effective that tactic can be. I think Amazon's marketing power makes people get a little lazy sometimes--they just focus on that system and ignore everything else--but especially with a niche market like science fiction, you have to reach out.

So, who are you representing, again?

The other thing that's happening is that the Association of Authors’ Representatives has sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking them to please let publishers break the law whenever they feel like it. This follows an earlier, similar letter by a board member of the AAR who also heads the agency Writer's House.

(Anyone else remember when Writer's House was a really prestigious agency? I would have given my left arm to be repped by them back in the day. On the other hand, I got screwed by people who were every bit as prestigious, so I guess it all worked out. This just goes to show that the line between respectable agency and dirtbag agency has basically become nonexistent.)

Of course my first thought was, Hey, these guys are Authors' Representatives the same way Scott Turow is president of the Author's Guild! But then Joe Konrath made that point many times, and it's very entertaining, so you should go read all that. And you should re-read how one agency dealt with problems reporting e-book revenues, just to hammer home who these people are actually working for.

And then you should read Bob Mayer's takedown (via PV). Mayer is both a writer and a publisher, and he makes a good (if painfully obvious to those outside the industry) point:

For too long some agents and many publishers mistakenly believed they actually created the PRODUCT that readers consumed:  i.e. the book.  Even with print, that’s not true.  The PRODUCT is the story, the words.  The printed book was the medium by which those words reached the reader.  Thus agents and publishers and bookstores were, and still are, facilitators.  Not creators.

I think this mentality that agents/publishers/bookstores create the product is at the core of why writers get treated so badly by traditional publishing. I mean, it makes sense for you to get 90% of the money if you create the product, right? If you're just a facilitator, taking such a big cut would suggest that you are somehow abusing your position, but if you created it--if Stephanie Meyer wouldn't be anything if it weren't for you!--then all's right with the world. So, yeah, the agents are lining up to back price-fixing publishers and Barnes & Noble rather than writers, because writers bring nothing to the party other than a whole lot of whining.

The main thing to understand is that agents are fighting to defend a system. Traditional publishing is a system that they understand, it's the system that allowed them to profit, and perhaps most important, it's a system in which they were important. They created books. They created literary culture.

If thing change things, they'll be just another service provider. What do agents do if they're not gatekeepers anymore? They help negotiate contracts. That's it.

And once you put things in those terms--once agents are off that gatekeeper pedestal and people are no longer forced to use them--people are going to look at what agents are providing and start asking questions. Pesky questions. Demeaning questions. Questions like, is this service worth paying for? Is this the best person to hire? Are they offering a good value?

That's going to be a considerable step down. That's going to be the end of the days of telling writers what kind of paper they should use for their queries.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt files for bankruptcy

It's a busy day out there in Webland! For starters, the New York Times reports that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is filing for bankruptcy--the Chapter 11 kind, not the "Th-th-th-that's all folks!" kind, so course the CEO is saying it's "positive news" and that employees certainly shouldn't start mailing out their resumes RIGHT NOW.

Everything's fine! It's just bankruptcy! I'm sure when the private-equity firm took on an unbelievable ton of debt, employees were told that that was nothing to worry about! And when Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt were combined, employees were told that consolidation is certainly NOT the mark of a shrinking industry, and that it was nothing to worry about! And when Houghton Mifflin Harcourt stopped taking on new books--nothing to worry about! At all! Everything's going great! The future is ours!

Ah, yes, it brings back memories.... The first publisher I worked for stopped contracting new books, too. I started looking for another job. (Doesn't that make me sound like I am immune to denial? I didn't actually realize what was going on until after I had a conversation with someone I was encouraging to move elsewhere. That person was not convinced to jump ship, but I sure was!) I found one, turned in my letter of resignation, and got REAMED OUT for my treachery and stupidity. Why was I leaving? I was so dumb! NOTHING WAS WRONG!!! Ten days after I left, they shuttered the New York office. (I don't resent the person who reamed me out--it was just another example of denial at work.)

What am I trying to say? If you work in traditional publishing, no matter what soft soap your boss is selling you, you need to get ready. Actually, you should already be ready--publishing has never been anything but a volatile industry--but you need to start thinking about a world without a traditional publishing industry in it. No matter what they tell you, publishers are NOT optimistic--they would not have attempted price-fixing if they were.

Will publishing services still be needed? Oh, yes. It's just that the way you do your work--who hires you, how you find work--is going to change immensely.